Heretofore many individuals have recognized the need to rotate hanging plants with respect to their source of light as this promotes better growth and have developed many inventions, both manual and in some respects automatic, to serve these ends. Some individuals have invented rotatable hanging devices such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,957,242 or U.S. Pat. No. 4,189,124 which assist in the manual rotation of the planter. Others have invented apparatuses for automatically rotating a planter through the use of the weight of water added to and evaporated from the planter as a result of feeding, U.S. Pat. No. 4,446,653 while others accomplish this using the weight of the planter itself, U.S. Pat. No. 4,238,002. Still another has utilized a clockwork mechanism, powered by weight, U.S. Pat. No. 4,117,630, for a daily continuous rotation.
Problems arise with these methods, however; because either they need the periodic maintenance of a person over a relatively short time span, one to several days, to physically rotate the planter or reset the weights or they are very irregular or erratic in their function as they depend on the changing weight of the water in the planter which may be affected by humidity, feeding, etc. In the case of the weight powered clockwork device, there also exists the problem of the weights and their chains, which are cumbersome and also affect the aesthetics of the planter.
Another individual has developed a rotatable hanging planter mount, U.S. Pat. No. 4,170,843, which incorporates an electric motor to continuously rotate the planter hanging from it. The problem with a device of this nature is the need for a continuous supply of a relatively large amount of electric power to run the motor. Any small self-contained power supply one might wish to use with such a device, such as a small battery, would quickly wear down. Hooking it up to a conventional 120 line on the other hand, requires additional wiring that may detract from the aesthetics of the unit. Also, in many instances, the places where one wishes to hang a plant are not those in which are found a convenient electric power supply.
Another individual has invented a device for a very efficient continuous rotation of hanging displays, see U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,536. But this device is not well suited for rotating planters both because of their relatively heavy mass and because it produces a rotation of a continuous and constantly varying nature. One seeks primarily to rotate plants in a manner so as to promote only a better, more even growth and does not need or wish to have the plants constantly swirling around, as this may detract from both their beauty and the ambience of the place in which they are hung.